Chapter 19

In every battle, there comes a time when both sides consider themselves beaten, then he who continues the attack wins.

-Ulysses S. Grant.

Emerging from Hyperspace instantly from the battle they had fled, the sole Leviathan had returned home. The living ship had to navigate a vast structure of catacombs, tunnels, and open space through the immense hive structure. Just like their ships, their space habitats are grown, not built.

The door opening from the Leviathan to access the Hive was not a typical airlock that would have been built on an Earth ship, but more like an umbilical cord of a mother’s womb to her child. Through the umbilical came three Minmoran solders along with a smaller man, standing around six feet tall, green scaly skin, large black eyes, with a nose that seemed to be part of his face. The man walked ahead of the far larger brutes behind him. As the Mordechai walked down the living tunnels, he would hiss at any Minmoran monster that did not snap to attention to salute. A few lazy brutes got a worse greeting when the lizard officer greeted them with his weapon.

The four halted as they reached another group of Minmoran soldiers. The Mordechai looked the pair of hairy brutes up and down, and hissed “Dissssssssspose of these…. Failuressssss.”

The three Minmoran beasts behind the Lizardman had a genuine look of surprise on their large stouts of faces, then roared as loud as they could to protest, just before the other guards shot them with their giant weapons.

After walking several minutes through the megalithic living structure, the lizard man came to a dark room, shut the membrane wall for privacy, and bent down to one knee, looking at the floor. Above him was a holographic image of a blue-skinned female with long tentacle-like protrusions on her head where her hair should be, the same color as her skin, part of her head. Only showing her upper body, her robe displayed royalty.

“My Queen,” hissed the Mordechai.

“Why have you disturbed me?” the blue-skinned Queen replied.

“The Sumerians have escaped.”

“What!” she shouted. Her skin turned from a dark blue to a bright crimson red. “They were pinned down. How could you let them escape!!!”

“My Queen,” the Mordechai trembled so slightly, not willing to let her see his scales shifting. “They had help!”

“Who would dare go against the Royal Guard of the Alliance!”

“They were feeble creaturessssss,” he hissed, “Never seen anything like them before. Pink skinned.” The Queen’s skin started turning from bright red to pure white listening to the description. “They had ships, lots of ships. They killed one of our young Leviathans, and I barely made it out myself.”

“Tell me more about them,” the Queen replied in a softer voice, her skin now white as a dwarf star.

“They sssssspoke in the ancient tongue,” he hissed.

“They survived?” the Queen spoke under her breath “..after all these years.”

“My Queen?” he was confused.

“I want your Leviathan’s memory downloaded to the collective. Start the unthaw process, awake all Tribal members from hibernation at once.”

“My Queen, we do not have enough food for the entire Tribe, we haven’t been awoken in almost two hundred thousand years!”

“If I am right, Mel`Nar,” she referred to him by his birth name, “You will have all the food you need for generations to come!!

Mel`Nar looked up at his Queen, slit eyes opened wide. Plentiful food supply had never been found outside of the alliance for hundreds of thousands of years. The Mordechai are generally not that intelligent; however, they are very militarily and tactically oriented. They could not comprehend raw information promptly. He had no idea how she knew this, but he embraced his Queen’s confidence. Enough food to wake up the entire Hive? She was bold! But this is why she was his Queen!

After a moment of thought, his strategic mind went to work, but one major problem kept coming up. The Legion! “My Queen,” he said as he bowed his head again “What of the Legion? They are still in great numbersss, ssssslowly getting larger by the day. We do not have enough ships to remove their threat!”

The Queen's skin began to fluctuate to a variety of warm colors, multiple different emotions taking over, indicating extreme excitement. “Leave that to me!” replied the Queen. “A war is coming, liege!” referring to Mel`Nar by his rank this time. “The Galaxy will see the might of the Alliance once again! Armies will be drafted; tradesmen will come to serve, ships will be built to destroy any who oppose us! The truth shall remain the law!! Make preparations to begin mass production on all Alliance models!”

“Yes, my Queen,” First Liege Mel`Nar said as he bowed before his master. She vanished in a shimmer of light. It was not over for the Queen, however. As soon as the monitor lit off, her skin stopped changing colors in excitement as it went to a solid brown, signaling worry. This new threat would cause a lot of problems, she knew, but how to stop them? Would the old tactics from the old war work on them again? How far have they advanced in technology? Fear flowed through her veins for the first time in millennia.